Talking Politics: HISTORY OF IDEAS
A new series of talks by David Runciman, in which he explores some of the most important thinkers and prominent ideas lying behind modern politics – from Hobbes to Gandhi, from democracy to patriarchy, from revolution to lock down. Plus, he talks about the crises – revolutions, wars, depressions, pandemics – that generated these new ways of political thinking. From the team that brought you Talking Politics: a history of ideas to help make sense of what’s happening today.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality (also known as the Second Discourse) tells the story of all human history to answer one simple question: how did we end up in such an unequal world? David explores the steps Rousseau traces in the fall of humankind and asks whether this is a radical alternative to the vision offered by Hobbes or just a variant on it. Is Rousseau really such a nice philosopher?
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Going deeper…
- Leo Damrosch, Jean Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius (2005)
- David Edmonds and John Eidinow, Rousseau’s Dog (2007)
- Pankaj Mishra, ‘How Rousseau predicted Trump’, The New Yorker (2016)
- (Audio) In Our Time, The Social Contract
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Joseph Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942) contains a famous, and minimal, definition of democracy as the competition between political elites to sell themselves to the electorate. Schumpeter wanted to debunk more elevated ideas of the common good and the popular will. Why then has his theory proved so influential for people who want to rescue democracy as much as those who want to diminish it?
Going Deeper:
- Ian Shapiro, The State of Democratic Theory (2006)
- Thomas K. McCraw, Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction (2007)
- Jill Lepore, ‘The Disruption Machine, New Yorker (2014)
- (Audio): Creative Destruction, BBC Radio 4
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Carl Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political (1932) has been hugely influential on the left as well as the right of political debate despite the fact that its author joined the Nazi Party shortly after its publication. David explores the origins of Schmitt’s ideas in the debates about the Weimar Republic and examines his critique of liberal democracy. He asks what Schmitt’s distinction between friend and enemy has to teach us about democratic politics today.
Going Deeper:
- Jan-Werner Mueller, A Dangerous Mind: CarlSchmitt in Post-War European Thought (2003)
- Tamsin Shaw, ‘William Barr: The Carl Schmitt ofOur Time,’ New York Review of Books (2020)
- Chang Che, ‘The Nazi Inspiring China’s Communists,’ The Atlantic (2020)
- (Audio): Carl Schmitt on Liberalism
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Rosa Luxemburg wrote ‘The Russian Revolution’ (1918) from a jail cell in Germany. In it she described how the Bolshevik revolution was going to change the world but also explained how and why it was already going badly wrong. David explores the origins of Luxemburg’s insights, from her experiences in Poland to her love/hate relationship with Lenin. Plus he tells the story of her terrible end.
Going Deeper:
- Vladimir Lenin, ‘What Is to be Done?’ (1902)
- Hannah Arendt, ‘A Heroine of Revolution,’ The New York Review of Books (1966)
- Kate Evans, Red Rosa (2015)
- (Audio): In Our Time, 'Rosa Luxemburg' (2017)
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Friedrich Nietzsche’s masterpiece The Genealogy of Morality (1887) sets out to explain where ideas of good and evil come from and why they have left human beings worse off. He traces their origins in what he calls the slave revolt in morality. David examines the ways Nietzsche’s story unsettles almost everything about modern social conventions and leaves us with the troubling question: what can possibly come next?
Going deeper:
- John Kaag, Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are (2018)
- Sue Prideaux, I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche (2018)
- Alex Ross, 'Nietzsche's Eternal Return,' The New Yorker (2019)
- (Audio): In Our Time, 'Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality (2017)
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Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872) is a strange and unsettling book about a world turned upside down. Usually classified as utopian or dystopian fiction, it also contains an eerie prophecy about the coming of intelligent machines. David explores the origins of Butler’s ideas and asks what they have to teach us about the oddity of how we choose to organise our societies, both then and now.
Going Deeper:
- Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh (1903)
- Virginia Woolf, 'Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown' (1924)
- George Dyson, Darwin Among the Machines (1997)
- (Video) James Paradis, 'Naturalism and Utopia: Samuel Butler's Erewhon'
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My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) by the former slave Frederick Douglass was the second of his three autobiographies and the one that contained his most radical ideas. In this episode David explores how Douglass used his life story not only to expose the horror of slavery but to champion a new approach to abolishing it. The name for this approach: politics.
Going deeper.....
- David Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (2018)
- Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America (1997)
- Colum McCann, TransAtlantic (2013)
- (Audio): Jamelle Bouie, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Rebecca Onion, 'Who Should Tell the Story of American Slavery?' (2015)
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Jeremy Bentham’s Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation is a definitive early statement of the basis of utilitarianism: how do we achieve the greatest happiness of the greatest number? David looks at Bentham’s rationale for this approach and the many criticisms it has faced. Bentham has often been accused of reducing politics to mechanical calculation and missing what really matters. But given the time in which he was writing, wasn’t the prioritisation of pleasure the most radical idea of all?
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Going deeper…
- Philip Lucas and Anne Sheeran, ‘Asperger’s Syndrome and the Eccentricity and Genius of Jeremy Bentham’ (2006)
- Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (1975)
- Thomas McMullan, ‘What does the panopticon mean in the age of digital surveillance?’, The Guardian (2015)
- (Audio) In Our Time, Utilitarianism
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We got lots and lots of excellent questions from listeners about the themes and ideas in this series of talks. In this extra episode
David will do his best to answer some of them, from Hobbes to Weber, and from Gandhi to feminism. Plus he talks about what's missing from this series and where we might start next time.
Go to https://www.talkingpoliticspodcast.com/history-of-ideas for the full collection of reading lists.
Quentin Skinner on the state:
(Video) Quentin Skinner, ‘What is the state? The question that will not go away’
Orwell on Gandhi:
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Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History (1992) became associated with the triumph of liberal democracy at the end of the twentieth century. But was Fukuyama really a triumphalist? David explores what Fukuyama had to say about the strengths and weaknesses of liberal democracy and asks whether his analysis still holds true today. What have we learned about the modern state from its history? And can it, and we, really change now?
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Going Deeper:
- Paul Hirst for the LRB on ‘Endism’
- Fukuyama at the 2020 Munich Security Conference
- Fukuyama on the 2016 presidential election
- Louis Menand, ‘Francis Fukuyama Postpones the End of History,’ The New Yorker.
- Talking Politics with Fukuyama
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Catharine MacKinnon’s Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (1989) challenges two dominant ways of thinking about politics: liberalism, which wants to protect us from the power of the state, and Marxism, which wants to liberate us through the power of the state. What if neither is good enough to emancipate women? Mackinnon explains why patriarchal power permeates all forms of modern politics. David
discusses what she thinks we can do about it.
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Going Deeper:
- Lorna Finlayson in the LRB on Catharine MacKinnon, feminism, and the law
- Catharine A. MacKinnon, Sexual harassment of working women: a case of sex discrimination (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979).
- Drucilla Cornell, ‘Sexual difference, the feminine, and equivalency: a critique of MacKinnon’s Toward a feminist theory of the state’, Yale Law Journal, vol. 100, no. 7, article 12.
- The NYTimes on Catharine MacKinnon and sexual harassment
- Catharine Mackinnon for The Atlantic on #MeToo
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Frantz Fanon was a psychiatrist who both experienced and analysed the impact of colonial violence. In The Wretched of the Earth (1961) he developed an account of politics that sought to channel violent resistance to colonialism as a force for change. It is a deliberately shocking book. David explores what Fanon’s argument says about the possibility of moving beyond the power of the modern state.
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Going Deeper:
- Megan Vaughan for the LRB on Fanon and psychiatry in North Africa
- Frantz Fanon, Toward the African revolution: political essays
- Frantz Fanon, Black skin, white masks (New York, NY: Grove Press, 2008).
- (Video) Gillo Pontecorvo, The Battle of Algiers [film] (1966)
- Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘Preface’, in Frantz Fanon, The wretched of the earth (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 2001)
- Alice Cherki, Frantz Fanon: a portrait, Nadia Benabid, trans. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006).
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Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition (1958) is a remarkably prophetic book. At its heart is an analysis of the relationship between labour, work and action, set against a time of rapid technological change. Arendt worried about the power of computers, believed in the capacity of people to reinvent themselves through politics and despaired of the influence of Thomas Hobbes. Was she right?
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Going Deeper:
- James Miller in the LRB on Hannah Arendt
- Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
- Hannah Arendt, Eichman in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
- In Our Time on Hannah Arendt
- Matthew Beard for the Guardian, ‘With Robots, is a life without work one we’d want to live?’
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Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom (1944) was written during the Second World War but Hayek was really worried about what would come next. He feared that wartime planning would spill over into the peacetime economy and destroy hard won freedoms. David explores where Hayek’s fears came from and asks why he worried that democracy would only make the problem worse. He also considers what makes Hayek such a politically influential and divisive figure to this day.
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Going Deeper:
- Geoffrey Hawthorn on Hayek and his overcoat for the LRB
- F.A. Hayek, ‘Individualism: True and False’
- Andrew Gamble, Hayek: The iron cage of liberty (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996)
- Stephen Metcalf in The Guardian, ‘Neoliberalism: The Idea that Swallowed the World’
- Hayek vs. Keynes
- Matt Ridley, The rational optimist: how prosperity evolves (London: Fourth Estate 2011)
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Max Weber’s The Profession and Vocation of Politics (1919) was a lecture that became one of the defining texts of twentieth century political thought. In it, Weber explores the perils and paradoxes of leadership in a modern state. Is it possible to do bad in order to do good? Can violence ever be virtuous? Does political responsibility send politicians mad? David discusses the legacy of Weber’s ideas and asks: who is the true Weberian politician?
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Going Deeper:
- Geoffrey Hawthorn on Max Weber for the LRB
- Joachim Radkau, Max Weber (Polity, 2009)
- Talking Politics on ‘Politics as a Vocation’ with Jonathan Powell
- Jan-Werner Müller, Contesting democracy: political ideas in twentieth century Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013)
- David for the LRB on Weber, Tony Blair, and the politics of good intentions
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Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj (1909) was a defining text of the movement for Indian independence from British colonial rule. It also articulated a radical new idea of politics in a modern context – peaceful protest or non-violent resistance. David explores the wider legacy of Gandhi’s ideas and asks what Gandhi’s withering attack on ‘machine’ politics means for the politics we have today.
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Going Deeper:
- Stephen Haggard on Gandhi for the LRB
- M.K. Gandhi, An autobiography: or the story with my experiments of truth (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2001).
- Ramachandra Guha, Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World 1915-1948
- Talking Politics with Ramachandra Guha on Gandhi’s politics
- Bhikhu Parekh, Gandhi: a very short introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
- Martin Luther King, ‘My Trip to the Land of Gandhi’
- E.M. Forster, ‘The Machine Stops’
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The Communist Manifesto (1848) remains the most famous revolutionary text of all. But what was the problem with politics that only a revolution could solve? And why were the working class the only people who could solve it? David explores what Marx and Engels really had to say about capitalism, crisis and class and he asks what still resonates from that message today.
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Going Deeper:
- Karl Marx, ‘The eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’
- Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German ideology
- Jonathan Wolff, Why read Marx today? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)
- Gareth Stedman Jones, Karl Marx: greatness and illusion (London: Allen Lane, 2016)
- In Our Time on Marx
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Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835/40) can claim to be the best book ever written about democracy and the best book ever written about America. David discusses what Tocqueville was expecting when he went to see American democracy for himself and what he actually found. Tocqueville was amazed and impressed by the American way of doing politics, but his fears about how its democracy might go wrong remain as prescient as ever.
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Going Deeper:
- In Our Time on Tocqueville’s Democracy in America
- Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr, Tocqueville: a very short introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)
- Annette Gordon Reed, ‘America’s Original Sin: Slavery and the Legacy of White Supremacy’
- Hugh Brogan, Alexis de Tocqueville: prophet of democracy in the age of revolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007).
- Talking Politics American History series on the 15th and 19th amendment
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Benjamin Constant’s ‘The Liberty of the Ancients Compared to the Liberty of the Moderns’ (1819) examines what it means to be free in the modern world. Are we at liberty to follow our hearts? Do we have an obligation to take an interest in politics? What happens if we don’t? David explores the lessons Constant drew from the failures of the French Revolution and his timeless message about the perils of political indifference.
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Going Deeper:
- Benjamin Constant, Adolphe
- William Doyle, The French Revolution: a very short introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)
- In Our Time on Germaine de Stael
- Isaiah Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’
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Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) is one of the most remarkable books in the history of ideas. A classic of early feminism, it uses what’s wrong with the relationship between men and women to illustrate what’s gone wrong with politics. It’s a story of lust and power, education and revolution. David explores how Wollstonecraft’s radical challenge to the basic ideas of modern politics continues to resonate today.
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Going Deeper:
- In Our Time on Mary Wollstonecraft
- Wollstonecraft in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Sylvana Tomaselli, Wollstonecraft: Philosophy, Passion, and Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020)
- Virginia Woolf on Mary Wollstonecraft
- Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
- Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
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Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651) reimagined how we could do politics. It redefined many of the ideas that continue to shape modern politics: representation, sovereignty, the state. But in Leviathan these ideas have a strange and puzzling power. David explores what Hobbes was trying to achieve and how a vision of politics that came out of the English civil war, can still illuminate the world we live in.
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Going Deeper:
- David Runciman, ‘The sovereign’ in The Oxford handbook of Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)
- Richard Tuck, Hobbes a Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)
- (Video) Quentin Skinner, ‘What is the state? The question that will not go away’
- (Video) Sophie Smith, ‘The nature of politics’, the 2017 Quentin Skinner lecture.
- Noel Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)
- David for The Guardian on Hobbes and the coronavirus
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A short trailer to introduce a new series of talks by David Runciman. In a series of twelve podcasts, he explores some of the most important thinkers and prominent ideas lying behind modern politics – from Hobbes to Gandhi, from democracy to patriarchy, from revolution to lock down. Plus he talks about the crises – revolutions, wars, depressions, pandemics – that generated these new ways of political thinking. From the team that brought you Talking Politics: a history of ideas to help make sense of what’s happening today.
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